state and trace

The idea of structure, as used in this newsletter, is nothing new. It was first introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure in 1916, in his enormously influential Course in General Linguistics. In it, Saussure describes language as a graph, and words as vertices. Between these vertices, there are negative edges representing difference, and positive edges...

When you're responsible for a junior developer, there's an early, crucial milestone: they know when to ask for help. Before this milestone, every task must be carefully curated. Each day of radio silence — be it from embarrassment or enthusiasm — is a cause for concern. Achieving this milestone can be difficult. It requires the developer to...

Once upon a time, every project began with the creation of a canonical design document. This was called the system architecture, because it "rightly implie[d] the notion of the arch, or prime, structure."1 Then, documents would be written for each module. These would provide detailed instructions for how the module should be implemented. ...

Previously, we explored how abstract explanations, paired with intent, become specific. And in our case, the intent is almost always to improve our software. But what does this actually mean? To begin, let's consider this metaphor: Things are looking up This is a statement of optimism: things are improving, and we expect this trend to...

There was, in the mid 2010s, a popular formula for explaining a new startup: "Uber, but for ____." This was a metaphor: the startup, despite targeting a different market, was similar to Uber. It was, however, a fairly ambiguous metaphor; there were many ways that a company could resemble Uber. The most visible facet of Uber was their use of a...